The Way Up is Death, by Dan Hanks

[rachelmanija]

In a prologue that's very Terry Pratchett-esque without actually being funny, an enormous floating tower appears in England, becomes a 12-hour wonder, and is then forgotten as people have short attention spans. Then thirteen random people suddenly vanish from their lives and appear at the base of the tower, facing the command ASCEND.

I normally love stories about people dealing with inexplicable alien architecture. This was the most boring and unimaginative version of that idea I've ever read. Each level is a death trap based on something in one of their minds - a video game, The Poseidon Adventure, an old home - but less interesting than that sounds. The action was repetitive, the characters were paper-thin, and one, an already-dated influencer, was actively painful to read:

Time to give her the Alpha Male rizzzzzzz, baby!

The ending was, unsurprisingly, also a cliche.

The tower was made by aliens who are testing their worthiness. If a randomly selected human makes it to the top, they've proved that humanity deserves to survive and the aliens won't blow up Earth.

Comments

[pauraque]

Sounds like an author who should have taken the classic "don't use the first idea you think of" writing advice.

[shadaras]

I read the description of this and went "someone is trying to do The Earth Is Online but in a bad white man way". :P Like, down to the description of floating black towers everywhere, etc, the entire premise feels like it was stealing from this. I mean, it's a good image! Someone could've come up with it on their own! But! It was my immediate thought. (I really love TEIO fwiw; I think that novel pulled off the conceit and had great character interactions and fun death traps.)

[rachelmanija]

Thank you! I never heard of that and it sounds like the good version.

[lirazel]

I'm surprised you made it all the way through that!

[rachelmanija]

I skimmed a lot.

[heavenscalyx]

Sounds like a trope better done by the videogames Persona 3 and Persona 4.